THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S DRIVEL AND NOT EVEN GOOD DRIVELsorry that just slipped out.


To me too - although looking at it, it's actually wall-to-wall damn fine music isn't it? Even if it's a bit low on the bells and whistles count.


Is that really all they're singing though? To me that's not a programme so much as a bracket.

I think it would have to be 1984 for me, since I don't think I've ever heard either of those pieces live. For some reason I don't get on so well with Roméo et Juliette despite generally thinking that Berlioz is a wonderful thing. And as for Salonen, I don't know what brought on Ollie's sudden rush of indulgence towards his compositional efforts... and I'm not at all keen on his conducting either. And if you want to get me to a concert with any Tavener in it, you might try employing a herd of wild horses, but you'd be better off not bothering.

Ooh, thanks chaps.  I may now just have to have an extended lunch break tomorrow.......

Tommo

Tuesday 7 August 1984

Ireland
A London Overture (11 mins)
Delius
On hearing the first cuckoo in spring (7 mins)
Shostakovich
Piano Concerto No.2 in F major (20 mins)

Interval

Bridge
Summer (10 mins)
Glazunov
The Seasons (35 mins)

Ian Hobson piano
BBC Concert Orchestra
Conducted by Christopher Seaman


Tuesday 31 July 2007
Royal Albert Hall: 7.00pm   

Sibelius
Tapiola (15 mins)
Britten
Piano Concerto (35 mins)

Interval

Varèse
Ecuatorial (12 mins)
Debussy
La mer (24 mins)

Steven Osborne piano
Tenebrae (men's voices)
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov conductor

Royal Albert Hall: 10.00pm


The Music Director of Paris's Ensemble Intercontemporain makes her Proms debut with the UK's leading new music ensemble. Boulez's characteristic revisiting of earlier works has resulted in a substantially expanded second revision of his Dérive 2 for 11 players. Birtwistle's Neruda Madrigales, a BBC co-commission first performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2005, is a melancholic yet sensuous setting of the Chilean poet's Ode to the Double Autumn.

Pierre Boulez
Dérive 2 (1988/2006) (40 mins)
Sir Harrison Birtwistle
Neruda Madrigales (BBC co-commission: London premiere) (32 mins)

There will be no interval

BBC Singers
London Sinfonietta
Susanna Mälkki conductor


The 1984 programme looks as if an original plan for a 'seasons' theme was abandoned half way through; a rather strange evening. The earlier of the 2007 concerts looks a real winner though; four highly contrasted twentieth century works. Having mentioned the rarity of the Britten piano concerto when it was scheduled in a 1984 concert, it's good to see it here. The Varèse work is a concert stranger, too: so two unfamiliar pieces grouped with two core repertoire works which represent their respective composers at the peak of their powers.

 Anybody else feel a sense of H&N-type late evening ghettoisation for the second Prom?

Yep - 2007 and if I could be there I'd be making a night of it!

(I've slightly revised my thoughts on E-P S's compositional talents in the post above by the way.)

I'm not sure about Britten's Piano Concerto, but otherwise the 2007 programme looks like the time traveller's choice. Coincidentally I was listening to Ecuatorial yesterday. I had the disconcerting feeling that it sounds like a much longer piece, most of which has been cut, which is interesting in itself I suppose but somehow the piece seems to have no "centre".

I don't know whether I could last through 40 minutes of Dérive 2 though. Unless my imagination of what it's going to be like is completely wrong.

To me quite a lot of Varèse sounds like that!

Dérive 2 - well, to me it makes a lot more sense at 40' than 20'. I think the new version is damn good - what he added, it needed.

Some nice slow expressive tunes for contrast.

Don't you raise that eyebrow at me.